This is just a bit short of a favorite, but nevertheless a pretty good story. It checks all the basic boxes, doesn't largely redo canon events, is not obvious about how it will all end, etc, etc...

Omega is a surprise. I don't know much about him/it, but when the shadow thing appeared as a pseudo-Doctor, my thoughts pretty much went right to "Valeyard".

Dawn being the key to the Time War and all that is certainly a departure from canon, if that's where its going, but not the worst way to tie Dawn into the story.

Doc is definitely in character here. I'm curious to find out what happened with Angel in 18-whatever.

I do find this is falling a bit into the trap of playing up how bad the Council are too much, particularly the nod to the overused fanon of the Cruciamentum being secretly intended to kill Slayers when they turn eighteen. I never bought that. I think its meant for exactly what they say- a test. I don't think the lead Watchers particularly care if it kills the Slayer, because they can always get another, but it also doesn't really do them any good to kill an experienced (and indoctrinated) asset and end up with a new one who (if they're like Buffy and not Kendra) will take time to find and train. I think fandom overestimates how quick the Council is to kill Slayers, in general- they didn't even try to kill Faith until she had committed multiple murders and smuggling her out of the country as a prisoner proved impractical, nor did they ever try to kill her while she was in prison, even though they had no Slayer under their control at the time and her death would have spawned a new one. Besides, the Council has always had more direct ways of killing a Slayer if they really wanted to. Why go to such round-about means when a sniper is something no Slayer has a defense against?

Good twist ending, liked the Dawn appearance and multiple timelines in general.

Definitely improved. I still feel like the Doctor is overshadowing Buffy a bit, when he's there. I think it helped to have Buffy acting without the Doctor around stealing the scene.

Okay, I think my problem here is that this story, thus far, very much feels like its written by someone who has much more respect and affection for Doctor Who than Buffy. The Buffy characters feel less like themselves (particularly Willow and Xander, their characterization just feels off, less insightful and more critical of Buffy than I'd see them being in this situation in canon). Buffy is a bit better now that's she's more fleshed out in this chapter, but this still feels more like a younger Buffy, not season three Buffy to me.

Also, as to the Watcher's Council- what they say about the Doctor here isn't really wrong, for the most part. The Doctor is a destroyer. And a hero. They're just seeing only half of the picture. If that's deliberate, rather than simply meant to bash the Council, then its quite clever writing.

I'm going to be honest- I've only read the first chapter and part of this one so far, but this story makes me angry. It hits pretty much every note from typical Buffy-bashing: portraying Buffy as an arrogant, bigoted thug who slays first and asks questions later, and automatically assumes that anything non-human deserves to die. Admittedly, the show is partly to blame for this because in some of its less well-written moments it veered toward that characterization itself, but its an inconsistent one, and deeply annoying.

Here's the thing about Buffy: she is actually extraordinarily open-minded towards non-humans. She is justified in killing vampires specifically because by the metaphysics of the Buffy-verse, non-ensouled vampires are pretty much uniformly killers. That's not bigotry, that's how the Buffy-verse works- its not the real world, its a fictional world with its own rules, and its not prejudice to act accordingly. Even pre-soul Spike, who was probably the most conscientious and sympathetic of non-ensouled vampires, would have casually killed on a nightly basis if not for the chip, and attempted to rape Buffy (and hey, she let him live and even actively worked with him, even before they were a couple). But when an exception comes along (see Angel, Spike), or when dealing with demons who aren't vampires or otherwise evil by nature, Buffy is actually quite willing to live and let live. She never tried to kill Anya after she became a vengeance demon again until she massacred a room full of people. She never tried to kill Spike's friend Clem. She actively defended Tara even when she erroneously believed her to be part-demon.

The stupid, bigoted, arrogant blunt instrument you wrote here isn't Buffy. Its fanon Buffy created to bash the character.

Your author's note doesn't really change anything- My concern is not Buffy being portrayed as evil, so much as it is your portraying her as stupid. Having some subsequent twist where it turns out that someone else is responsible for her stupidity and ignorance, and having the Doctor call them out, doesn't change that- it just robs the character of her agency on top of turning her into a straw man.

This is a really good story.

So what would be the entity worse than Toby that could come in? The Doctor mentions it, but says Buffy doesn't want to know

Haha! Nice perspective twist on the Doctor. "He kidnaps young girls, and changes them."

I loved the book part. It was very reminiscent of the Hitchhikers' Guide.

Great fic, it was cool seeing Omega again, and I like the whole bit where The First and the Beast are the same villain, it makes a lot of sense in a cool expanded fandom mythology sort of way. The idea of it getting it's hands on the Doctor, nasty thought, everyone would be doomed.

Is it fine them talking about all of this in the cell?

What's to say that the Watchers don't have sound/recordings of the room?

"Just think about this, Omega," the Doctor pleaded. "You know what you're unleashing on the universe."

"And is that any better than what the universe already has?" Omega spat at him. "A murderer? A Destroyer of Worlds?"

- I think you mean "And is that any worse than..." Is Toby worse than the Doctor, would be the retort, when the Doctor has destroyed Gallifrey, etc. etc.

He held her by the wrists, and Buffy struggled against him, trying to get out of his hold. She kicked out at him, but he dodged her expertly. His skin was cool. She could feel two pulses in the veins beneath his wrist.

If the Doctor is HOLDING her by the wrist, that means HIS fingers are wrapped around HER wrist. She couldn't have felt his pulse in his wrist - she's not touching them with her fingertips. And you can't really feel it holding your wrist against any other part of an arm. So she wasn't feeling it by some chance of his hold.

And Buffy had made a really stupid decision, but so it goes.

Also another comment, I loved the sort of fight in the first chapter, and the way that with the Doctor things always end up working out right so that he survives (though not necessarily the people around him).

There is of course though a lot more than any sort of high quality sensing abilities going on, I think its fairly clear the Tardis is able to tell whether an adventure will work out or not before it takes the Doctor there so that only trips where the Doctor and companions survive are generally allowed. With a partial exception for cases where there are weird time things going on.